Over the past few posts, I’ve written about what project managers usually do that may cause the project to be finished even later than was expected.
Today I bring to you:
Overstaffing
If you’re a manager, the project you’re managing is behind the deadline, and you want it to get more behind, then start to overstaff your teams!
You may doubt about doing this thinking: “The more staff may mean it will be finished faster,” but don’t worry about it, there is even a saying about:
You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
Everyone knows this
So well, you may be thinking, “then how is going to help me to deliver later the project?” And there are lots of answers to this, for example, an article in infoQ says:
More people lead to miscommunication, which can increase defects and cause rework. Indeed, more people usually leads to more — not less – time being spent on a project.
Lawrence Putman from infoQ
What moment is best to overstaff the project?
I would say: from the beginning. Imagine this scenario: your team still hasn’t finished all design activities, so you overstaff your project so that way, three cases may happen:
- The design part will be pressured and maybe not completed correctly because you may distribute the work in a way where the interfaces are not minimized.
- You will have your overstaff doing nothing, and you will be wasting money!
So basically, if you want to have a really bad scenario with your projects, a way of doing this is overstaffing it!
Talking seriously
PLEASE DON’T DO THIS unless you really want to make your project suffer, don’t do it, pretty please :).
